]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/28/final-fantasy-agnis-philosophy-tech-demos-surface/feed/2Luminous Engine will attract dev talent, says Square Enixhttp://www.vg247.com/2013/01/03/luminous-engine-will-attract-dev-talent-says-square-enix/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/03/luminous-engine-will-attract-dev-talent-says-square-enix/#commentsThu, 03 Jan 2013 22:05:47 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=327194Square Enix won’t be handing out licenses for its super-slick Luminous Engine, so if you want to get your hands on it, you’ll just have to sign on with the Japanese publisher.

Speaking to Shack News, Square Enix’s western president and CEO Mike Fischer said Luminous is an in-house only affair, thank you very much.

“This is an in-house tool. We’re not building this around a licensing model,” he said.

But developers who sign with Square Enix may negotiate for access to the tech, too.

“It’s my hope that this makes teams and creative people around the world excited to work for us because they’ll get their hands on some of the best technology in the industry,” Fischer explained.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2012/12/15/agni%e2%80%99s-philosophy-tech-videos-demonstrate-character-tweaking/feed/5Luminous engine demo shows off on-the-fly tweakinghttp://www.vg247.com/2012/11/27/luminous-engine-demo-shows-off-on-the-fly-tweaking/
http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/27/luminous-engine-demo-shows-off-on-the-fly-tweaking/#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2012 23:20:27 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=319147Square Enix has released a new demo for its Luminous engine, showing off the tech’s boast-worthy rendering capacities, which allow developers to change parameters and see results in real time.

In the video below you’ll see the action pause as someone fiddles with a menu; with just a few clicks, things like lighting effects, hair length and number of objects on screen are changed, and then immediately visualised in the cinematic. This is pretty amazing.

The original demo itself is still well worth a look, too. Square Enix has at least one game on the go in Luminous but as the engine isn’t complete the new title hasn’t gone into full production and has not been announced.

“Focusing on graphics only would be a huge mistake. You start to have super great graphics, characters look really good and you end up in the uncanny valley, but you don’t have animation at the same quality level,” Merceron said, referring to a widely-held hypothesis that too-realistic non-human figures are disturbing.

“Same thing with behavior and AI; it animates well and looks good, but it is making stupid decisions. It simply won’t be immersive. So focusing on graphics only is a big mistake. People will need to focus on animation, and I believe our Philosophy demo is highlighting that, but also on the AI and physics too.”

Merceron said impressive graphical feats are quickly surpassed, but animation fails to keep up, leading to an unnecessary lag in realistic appearances and behaviour.

“The problem I am talking about is, as soon as we ramp up the quality on graphics, this level of quality on facial animations won’t be good enough. Some games succeed to be at the limit of the uncanny valley, but the problem is that as rendering quality will go up, new problems will surface,” he said.

“The quality of the facial and body animations and the acting won’t be good enough. So that is why as you evolve, you have to upgrade your physics, rendering and animations. It will always be a problem. As you push something, you have to recalibrate and rebalance these out. You can’t have these stunning graphics while characters are acting funny on the screen.”

Merceron’s solution is to focus on immersion rather than pushing for photo-realistic graphics.

“The gameplay needs to be involving, the environment needs to be immersive, and the characters need to be full of emotions so you are totally sucked into the experience. This is why we have this role of balancing all these things so we end up with something that is consistent and works well,” he said.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2012/07/10/uncanny-valley-will-always-be-a-problem-says-square-tech-boss/feed/5Square: CG and gameplay will share assets in next-genhttp://www.vg247.com/2012/06/28/square-cg-and-gameplay-will-share-assets-in-next-gen/
http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/28/square-cg-and-gameplay-will-share-assets-in-next-gen/#commentsThu, 28 Jun 2012 08:34:44 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=273246Luminous Studio, the Square team behind E3′s incredible Agni’s Philosophy demo, has told RPGSite that CG assets will be pulled down into gameplay in the next generation.

The notion of swapping assets backwards and forwards between CG and gameplay is now a reality to the creators of the E3 animation.

“Yeah, that’s what we’re expecting to do,” said Yoshihisa Hashimoto, Square Enix CTO, when asked if the process was possible in the new Square tech.

“For the backgrounds used in this – the mountains, the houses – we are using exactly the same assets as are used in the Visual Works CG version.”

Hashimoto cautioned, however, that there’s still work to be done on asset-sharing systems in this regard.

“Of course, it’s too massive of a data to use in a game as-is, but I think the look and feel will probably remain,” he said. “If we had time, we could’ve compressed the data even smaller. We didn’t have time to do that, so we just used the same master data – but it can definitely be reduced.”

He added that it could be a “challenge” to fit next-gen games on a single Blu-ray because of the sheer size of graphical assets involved.

“We have to really consider the mechanism of compressing the data carefully,” he said.

Both PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox are expected to release at the end of 2013.

The Agni’s Philosophy demo, which you can watch below, is in real-time. A CG version was shown behind closed doors at E3, but has yet to be released by Square.

Epic released its first look at Unreal Engine 4 at E3, which showed similar levels of graphical detail to Agni’s Philosophy. Watch it down below.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/28/square-cg-and-gameplay-will-share-assets-in-next-gen/feed/6Square announces talks for next month’s Japan Expo in Francehttp://www.vg247.com/2012/06/22/square-announces-talks-for-next-months-japan-expo-in-france/
http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/22/square-announces-talks-for-next-months-japan-expo-in-france/#commentsFri, 22 Jun 2012 16:33:36 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=271930Square Enix has revealed its plans for the Japan Expo which takes place July 5 through July 8 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center in France.

Square Enix and Nintendo Conference: “10th Anniversary of Kingdom Hearts” – Shinji Hashimoto, executive producer, and Yoko Shimomura, composer of the series, will celebrate ten years of theKingdom Hearts series on Saturday, July 7 at 14:00 on the Video Games stage. Both will then be at a signing session in the Nintendo booth at 16:30.

Square Enix Conference: “The Future of Final Fantasy XIV Online” – Naoki Yoshida, producer and game director, will present his vision of the future of Final Fantasy XIV Online on Saturday, July 7 at 15:00 on the Video Games stage. He will then be in a signing session in autograph room EQ55 (Hall 6) at 17:30.

Square Enix Presentation: “Agni’s Philosophy & Luminous” – Julien Merceron, Square Enix director of technology, will comment on the technical demonstration of Agni’s Philsophy – Final Fantasy, realized through Luminous next-generation technology, on Saturday, July 7 at 16:00 on the Video Games stage.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/22/square-announces-talks-for-next-months-japan-expo-in-france/feed/3Square Enix’s Luminous designed for RPGs and action RPGshttp://www.vg247.com/2012/06/07/square-enixs-luminous-designed-for-rpgs-and-action-rpgs/
http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/07/square-enixs-luminous-designed-for-rpgs-and-action-rpgs/#commentsThu, 07 Jun 2012 07:09:29 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=267549The gorgeous Luminous Engine Square Enix showed off at E3 is intended to power the next generation of Final Fantasy games, as well as other, action-oriented titles.

Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada gave an interview on the engine in Famitsu, as translated and summarised by Andriasang, in which he confirmed the technology will be jealously guarded.

“We aren’t thinking about selling the engine externally,” he said.

“There’s no mistake that Luminous Studio is an engine made with the view of producing RPGs like the past Final Fantasy games. But not just that – it has a broad reach, from games with high action to games without high action.”

Despite this account of the tech’s adaptability, Wada said Luminous is planned for specific types of games, much as Crystal Dynamics uses its Crystal engine for action adventure, and IO Interactive uses Glacier for shooters.

However, unlike other engines developed by Square’s Japanese studios, Luminous isn’t yet attached to any particular projects. The executive hinted that a first title may go into production by the end of the year.

Asked about the state of the Japanese industry compared to the rest of the world, Wada commented that he hoped Square Enix could give the Japanese something to be proud of and mentioned that the publisher is going to take risks on new IPs and games with “backbone” that he himself would like to play.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/07/square-enixs-luminous-designed-for-rpgs-and-action-rpgs/feed/2Luminous Engine demo shots are drop dead gorgeoushttp://www.vg247.com/2012/06/06/luminous-engine-demo-shots-are-drop-dead-gorgeous/
http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/06/luminous-engine-demo-shots-are-drop-dead-gorgeous/#commentsWed, 06 Jun 2012 18:15:27 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=267271During E3, Square Enix showed off a real-time demo of its Luminous Engine and we’ve got some high resolution shots for you posted below. You can watch the demo, which was posted last night, through here. Try not to drool overly much.

Square Enix demonstrated the new technology at an after-hours E3 2012 event. GameInformer reports that chief technology officer Yoshihisa Hashimoto wowed the audience by showing the Agni’s Philosophy tech demo below, then tweaking some of the components such as hair colour, and running it again, to prove it was not pre-rendered.

Go ahead and turn that up to 1080p before you start it; give your eyeballs a treat.

According to Siliconera, the demo is Final Fantasy themed, but not part of, indicative of, or planned as a specific game.

Luminous is planned as a next-gen tech to close the gap between real-time gameplay graphics and pre-rendered cinematics, which is impressive enough, but Square Enix also expects it to be scalable, capable of running on low-powered mobile devices as well as high-end consoles and PCs.

We’ve heard some pretty amazeballs things about Luminous in the past; it can allegedly automatically adjust character animations to cope with changes to equipment weight or musculature parameters, and to cross uneven terrain.

The proprietary tech was shown off at a Japanese event reported by GameWatch and deciphered by Edge.

The in-house only engine is touted as “photo realistic”, and Square announced several new features to this end, including cloth and fluid simulation, realtime reflections and new tessellation techniques; according to Edge, that last one means a higher level of detail on 3D models without blowing up memory usage. Edge has a small gallery of images showing off the lighting effects and detail in side-by-side comparisons with real world source images.

Luminous is also set to support motion capture-informed procedural animation. Drawing on a database of information, the engine will apparently be able to automate a number of tasks by independently calculating changes in movement as parameters are adjusted. Thus, if an artist changes one part of a character model – repositioning the arms – the rest of the body will adjust to match; a heavier weapon will produce a different animation to a lighter one; and walking animations react to terrain types.

On the non-graphical side, Square Enix is promising advanced, scalable AI support. Luminous was first detailed in August, with Square Enix promising native DirectX 11 support and programmable shaders. No games based wholly on the new engine have been announced, but some parts of the tech are used in the upcoming Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Square Enix has hinted that the engine will be compatible with current gen hardware.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2011/10/12/squares-photo-realistic-luminous-tech-demoed/feed/19Square reveals new gaming engine, Luminoushttp://www.vg247.com/2011/08/26/square-reveals-new-gaming-engine-luminous/
http://www.vg247.com/2011/08/26/square-reveals-new-gaming-engine-luminous/#commentsFri, 26 Aug 2011 19:00:36 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=198776Square Enix has revealed its new game engine, Luminous, built for PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and next-gen consoles. The firm has said since it supports programmable shaders, games for Wii U and Vita will be a shoe-in. According to an Impress Watch report, the firm is looking into options for Nintendo Wii and 3DS which don’t support programmable shaders. The Direct X 11 native engine will not be made available to developers outside the firm, and in-house development studios such as IO Interactive and Crystal Dynamics will continue to use the Glacier 2 and CDC Engines, respectively. Thanks, Develop.
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